House Gets Hired
by cantstopobsessing
Summary: Pre-series, and pre-infarction, House goes to PPTH to get interviewed by Cuddy to get a job at the hospital.


Cuddy stood from her desk chair when her latest applicant walked through the door like he owned the place. "Greg House," she said with a bright smile, leaning over with her arm extended to shake his hand.

He stopped on the opposite end of her desk and stared at her low cut blouse wide eyed and sat down without taking her hand. "Lisa Cuddy," he responded while taking a seat on the chair to his right and made himself comfortable slouching down, still staring at her chest. "It's making more sense to me as to how you got this job."

"Is this how you start all your interviews?" she asked with a hint of disgust, but made no effort to cover herself.

"No, not usually," he answered casually, looking her in the eye for the first time. "With the men, I don't care so much about the cleavage."

"Don't you have a girlfriend? She's okay with you talking to other women like this?"

"Psh..do you see her here? She knows I care about her. I'm just looking; there's nothing wrong with that," his gaze dropped down to the surface of her desk. "Now, if I were to grab you from my side of the desk and throw you down and screw you right here and now," he looked back up at her his brows furrowed, "then yeah..I think I would have a problem," his expression warped back to neutral. "But, I'm not going to do that. So, I'm good." He looked at her skeptically, "do you ask all your applicants if they have girlfriends?"

"No," she answered flushed from him asking her that, and to the flashback of the one night in college they shared where they had sex, and hated that she wondered if he thought about it to. But, she pushed through and continued, looking down at his resume she had in front of her. "So, I see on here that you never last long at the hospitals you've worked at in the past," she looked up at him confused. "What did you do?"

He rolled his eyes, "they were a little upset about how I treated all the morons they gave me as patients. It's not my fault that they don't know what's up or down."

"They filed lawsuits against you."

He scowled, "those were the real moaners. I cured them and they still said I treated them terribly. If I were to treat them terribly, I never would have treated them at all, and let them go home to die, sending them on their way saying everything was fine so I wouldn't have to deal with them. But, I didn't," he narrowed his eyes and raised his voice, "they just couldn't see it my way."

"You told them that?" she asked startled.

"Yeah! But, it didn't work."

"Look, House, I," she looked down shaking her head, "I want to take you on but," she met his gaze. "I don't know if I want to take that risk of my hospital being sued every time you get someone upset," she told him.

He inhaled and nodded, "okay. No big deal," he used his hands against the arm rests to push himself out of the chair. "Thanks for seeing me anyway, Cuddy," his gaze lingered on her a little longer which she held with her own at him, "you look good."

Cuddy exhaled, making a face as he turned to walk out thinking of asking him to hang on a second when Dr. Richman walked in with a file in his hand, rushing passed House, over to Cuddy's desk. "I think we should transfer my patient to another hospital. I can't diagnose him. I don't know what he has, and he is just getting worse."

House listened intently, near her door that he opened, interested, with Cuddy noticing but too invested in what Richman said to care. "What do you mean he's getting worse?" she asked, her tone raised with irritation as she took the file from him to look for herself.

"He came in with a rash. We gave him creams for it and sent him home. He just came back and they haven't helped at all. It's starting to spread."

House stared at the floor taking everything he was hearing in and winced at how lost this doctor seemed as to how to go about diagnosing when he had a couple theories just by what he overheard. "How old is the guy?"

Dr. Richman turned around to face House, noticing him for the first time with his hand on the doorknob. "44, why?" he shifted back to Cuddy before he answered, "who is this guy?"

"This is...Dr. House. House, it's okay, we have got this."

House closed the door and walked further into the office. "Did you check his mouth? His ears?"

"Noooo," Richman said slowly, "the rash is on his skin and-"

"Fine, do those have blisters?"

Richman paused starting to get an idea of where House was going. "You think it's PV?"

House threw his right arm up in the air. "There's only one way to tell is there? If basic creams didn't work then you got something worse then just an ugly rash that makes him not want to go outside until it's all better. If you send him home untreated with PV, he won't have to worry about outside anymore because he'll be dead!"

"House!" Cuddy interrupted sternly.

He exhaled and swung his head to look at Cuddy then back to Richman. "Do a skin biopsy. Take some of a blister and the skin surrounding it. If it comes out positive, you get him in a room, and treat him. He'll be fine." Richman glanced at Cuddy, and she nodded, giving the okay for him to listen to House and Richman left, leaving the two of them staring at one another. "Well, this has been fun," House said cheerfully to break the silence. "I'll just be on my way now." House exited and left Cuddy wondering if she made the right call by not taking him as part of her staff.

Cuddy sat at her desk three hours later with House's resume back in her hand and dialed his cell number listed. "Hello?" she heard a woman answer.

"Oh..I'm sorry, I was trying to reach a Greg House and I must have-"

"This is his phone. Hang on, let me get him, who is this?" the woman asked her.

"Lisa Cuddy. I interviewed him earlier."

"Oh, right, he told me all about it. I'm Stacy, his girlfriend, hang on a second." Cuddy heard noise of a door open and what sounded like a shower running in the background and Cuddy gulped and tried to push away the feelings that were building up of jealousy towards her. "Greg?" Cuddy heard with an echo which confirmed her thought of being in the bathroom where House was showering.

"What?" she heard him scream.

"Lisa Cuddy is on the phone for you," she shouted through the noise of the shower.

"Cuddy?" a shiver ran down her spine at the way she heard him say her name. She heard a shower curtain push open and House's voice sounded closer, due to his head poking out of the opening. "Get the towel over there, dry my face for me," he told Stacy. After a couple seconds she heard House speak into the phone. "Was I right?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said trying desperately to push the image of him standing naked with the shower running while talking to her. "We just started treatment."

"Good, thanks for letting me know."

"House," she said frantically, afraid he would hang up before she got the chance to tell him what she had been thinking.

"Yeah?"

"I think...maybe I pushed you away too soon. I could really use someone like you at the hospital."

"You mean someone who knows what they are doing? That doctor of yours is an idiot for not having seen that coming."

"I know..he, was hired by the guy before me. I'm trying to get better doctors in here now that I have the job."

"Good, then maybe if I'm there you can get more funding with more patients coming in where you can afford to get sued once or twice." He sensed her get tense on the other end. "Not that I'm saying it's a definite thing."

Cuddy sighed on the other end, "am I going to regret this?"

"No, you won't."

She was still skeptical of if this was the right decision but from a patients point of view, she knew she would be stupid to not hire him before another hospital does. "Okay, House. I'll hire you. When can you come in so we can work out what department you will be going into and to sign all the paperwork I need?"

House scowled at the idea of paperwork, "I can come in next Monday."

"Today is Monday, so next Monday is a week from now."

"Wow," he answered sarcastically, "you can do that in your head? Now that's impressive!"

"Shut up, House. I haven't hired you yet."

"But, you won't take it back. You need me there."

Cuddy was silent, angry that he was right. "Come in tomorrow."

"Fine. I'll see you then," another thought popped into his head before he hung up. "Oh Cuddy!"

"What?" she asked calmly into the phone which startled him, thinking she would have been close to hanging up by now.

"How does your Oncology department look?"

"You want to go into Oncology?" she asked surprised.

"No, Cancer is boring. I know a guy that chose that as his specialty."

"Oh, you know a guy," she stated sarcastically. "I'm already taking a risk with you."

"But that's what's great is he's nothing like me. People love him because he's so caring. So much so, he actually kind of makes my teeth hurt. But, he's good at what he does."

"He's caring and friends with you?"

House chuckled, "yeah, I don't understand it either. Can I send him over to be interviewed?"

"Yeah, sure. What's his name?"

"James Wilson."

"Okay, send him by."

"Great, see you tomorrow, Cuddy."

Before she got a chance to answer she heard his end disconnect.

"Stacy! Take my phone I'm done!" Stacy came back in and took it from him with a questionable look. "I got it," he said slipping his head back into the shower, leaving the curtain open.

"Oh my God, Greg! That's great!" she pulled his face out of the stream of the shower and kissed him.

Cuddy stared at the phone after she hung up thinking over what she had just done. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth with the idea of Greg House being in her hospital. She was always amazed at how smart he was in college and she became excited by the idea of him being employed by her. Her thoughts were interrupted when she was paged into the Clinic. Her smile still lingered when she left her office, looking forward to what laid ahead.


End file.
